strong-armed bearers, and so borne through the twilight over this seething

multitude towards the apartments that were provided for me in the moon.

All about me were eyes, faces, masks, a leathery noise like the rustling

of beetle wings, and a great bleating and cricket-like twittering of

Selenite voices."

We gather he was taken to a "hexagonal apartment," and there for a space

he was confined. Afterwards he was given a much more considerable liberty;

indeed, almost as much freedom as one has in a civilised town on earth.

And it would appear that the mysterious being who is the ruler and master

of the moon appointed two Selenites "with large heads" to guard and study

him, and to establish whatever mental communications were possible with

him. And, amazing and incredible as it may seem, these two creatures,

these fantastic men insects, these beings of other world, were presently

communicating with Cavor by means of terrestrial speech.

Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. Phi-oo, he says, was about 5

feet high; he had small slender legs about 18 inches long, and slight feet

of the common lunar pattern. On these balanced a little body, throbbing

with the pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft, many-jointed arms

ending in a tentacled grip, and his neck was many-jointed in the usual

way, but exceptionally short and thick. His head, says Cavor--apparently

alluding to some previous description that has gone astray in space--"is

of the common lunar type, but strangely modified. The mouth has the usual

expressionless gape, but it is unusually small and pointing downward, and

the mask is reduced to the size of a large flat nose-flap. On either side

266

The First Men In The Moon